Most of the time we go through the day, through our activities,
our work, our relationships, our conversations, and very rarely
do we ground ourselves in an awareness of our bodies. We are lost
in our thoughts, our feelings, our emotions, our stories, our
plans. A very simple guide or check on this state of being lost
is to pay attention to those times when you feel like you are
rushing. Rushing does not have to do with speed. You can rush
moving slowly, and you can rush moving quickly.

We are rushing when we feel as if we are toppling forward. Our
minds run ahead of ourselves; they are out there where we want to
get to, instead of being settled back in our bodies. The feeling
of rushing is good feedback. Whenever we are not present, right
then, in that situation, we should stop and take a few deep
breaths. Settle into the body again. Feel yourself sitting. Feel
the step of a walk. Be in your body.

The Buddha made a very powerful statement about this;
"Mindfulness of the body leads to nirvana." Such
awareness is not a superficial practice. Mindfulness of the body
keeps us present.

- Joseph Goldstein, from Transforming the Mind, Healing the
World, posted to The_Now2

A man who is given a stone and assured that it is a priceless
diamond will be mightily pleased until he realizes his mistake;
in the same way pleasures lose their tang and pains their barb
when the self is known. Both are seen as they are--conditional
responses, mere reactions, plain attractions and repulsions,
based on memories or preconceptions. Usually pleasure and pain
are experienced when expected. It is all a matter of acquired
habits and convictions.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels

Imagine walking along a sidewalk with your arms full of
groceries, and someone roughly bumps into you so that you fall
and your groceries are strewn over the ground.

As you rise up from the puddle of broken eggs and tomato juice,
you are ready to shout out, "You idiot! What's wrong with
you? Are you blind?" But just before you can catch your
breath to speak, you see that the person who bumped you is
actually blind. He, too, is sprawled in the spilled groceries,
and your anger vanishes in an instant, to be replaced by
sympathetic concern: "Are you hurt? Can I help you up?"

Our situation is like that. When we clearly realize that the
source of disharmony and misery in the world is ignorance, we can
open the door of wisdom and compassion. Then we are in a position
to heal ourselves and others.

You are not what you think you are. Stop paying attention to your
thoughts and find out who you really are. When you stop paying
attention to your thoughts, the stories, feelings, and activity
driven by them stop. Then you can discover what is arising out of
the flow - what is true to do now, in this moment. That is all
you need to know. Pay attention to now, and the rest will take
care of itself.

- Gina Lake

Call Off the Struggle

Most people are in a constant state of struggle with themselves.
Tremendously burdened by the past and in constant anticipation of
the future, most human beings are rarely able to be fully present
for more than very brief moments. The tremendous openness and
intimacy that is required to be fully present is beyond most
people's ability to sustain for more than a few moments before
they habitually contract back into the familiar condition of
separateness and struggle that so characterizes the human
condition. This constant state of struggle manifests as a
compulsive and addictive relationship to the movement of thought,
emotion, and time.

There is great reluctance to stop struggling because in the
absence of struggle you suddenly begin to lose your boundaries
and definitions of who you are. For many people this causes fear
to arise as they experience the loss of their familiar sense of
self. Struggling is how the ego-personality maintains its
existence. When you cease to struggle, identification with the
personality begins to break down and you become aware of your
emptiness and lack of boundaries.

The most difficult thing for spiritual seekers to do is to stop
struggling, striving, seeking, and searching. Why? Because in the
absence of struggle you don't know who you are; you lose your
boundaries, you lose your separateness, you lose your
specialness, you lose the dream you have lived all your life.
Eventually you lose everything that your mind has created and
awaken to who you truly are: the fullness of freedom, unbound by
any identifications, identities, or boundaries.

It is this locationless freedom of being that spiritual people
are seeking, and at the same time are running away from because
its faceless nature gives no fixed reference point for the
personality to hold onto or to seek security in. As long as you
remain identified with the personality, you will always be
seeking security to the exclusion of the Truth, and will remain
in a constant state of struggle. It is only when your love and
desire for Truth outweigh the personality's compulsive need for
security that you can begin to stop struggling and be swept up
into the arms of an ever-unfolding revelation of the Truth and
Freedom of Being.

- Adyashanti

So, plunge into the truth,
Find out who the teacher is,
Believe in the great Sound!

Kabir says this...
The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten (dies) ...

is all fantasy.

What is found now - is found then.

The guest is inside you,
and also inside me;
you know the sprout is hidden inside the seed.

We are all struggling; none of us has gone far.
Let your arrogance go, and look around inside ...

A million suns come forward with Light,
when I sit firmly in that world.

I hear bells ringing that no one has shaken,
inside love there is more joy than we know of,

Rain pours down, although the sky is clear of clouds,
there are whole rivers of Light.

The universe is shot through in all parts
by a single sort of love.

- Kabir, from The Kabir Book, translated by Robert Bly,
posted to Mystic_Spirit